


Extracurricular

by the_ragnarok



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-01
Updated: 2010-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:29:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur chased Dom and Mal until they caught him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extracurricular

**Author's Note:**

> This is made of schmoop, porn and Arthur doing laundry. Approach with caution.

On Arthur's printed schedule, his afternoon session was supposed to be taught by a Mrs. M. Cobb, who Arthur assumed to be in her forties and motherly. In his defense, he was still very young and not very well informed.

When she walked into the class in a hurry, he first assumed she was another student, up until the point she wrote her name on the whiteboard in huge, round handwriting, and turned around to beam at them.

Arthur sat back and watched her through the class, helplessly charmed by both her and the subject. He'd always been told he should go for engineering, but he loved this as well – the way the swell of an arch wasn't just strength but beauty, too.

Mal – she asked them to call her that, and they complied with murmurs and blushing smiles – Mal too had about her something, not just beauty but a sense of being well designed, put together in a way that was artistic as well as clever.

Arthur found himself sitting in the front row for every class she taught. He'd gone through his coursework in advance so he could have things to ask her, so he could hear her delighted laugh when he put ideas together before she could present the whole thing to the class.

He tried not to overdo it. Mal must have recognized that, because she smiled at him and asked him to stay after class, “If you have any further questions?”

He did. Of course he did, and the more she told him, the more he learned, beyond the scope of her class and into more advanced subjects. He found himself reading odd books that caught his eye, hitting the Wikipedia random button again and again rather than going to sleep, looking for little nuggets of knowledge that might amuse her.

“Apparently, the platypus isn't really a mammal,” he told her once, and when she raised an immaculate eyebrow at him, he said, “See, they have gene parts from mammals, reptiles _and_ birds.”

Mal raised the other eyebrow. “Sounds like a shoddy design.”

“I know.” He smiled at her, gleeful when she smiled back. “Also, when they brought the first platypus to England, all the researchers thought it was a hoax. They thought someone pinned a duck bill on a beaver's body.”

“Now that I can believe,” Mal said and turned to pack her bag. Arthur bit his lip, trying to think of something more interesting to tell her.

He failed, but the pictures of a Dumbo octopus and a coconut crab he bought next time worked better.

~~

“Arthur,” Mal said, while he was looking for the file he wanted to show her, “can I ask you something?”

He stopped the search, looking at her face instead. “Of course.”

“Do you enjoy your studies?” She sat at the edge of her desk. Her gaze was serious and calm.

“You know I do,” he said, nearly reproachfully.

Her lips curved upwards, to his slight surprise. “I know you enjoy my class,” she said, with a meaningful look. “But the rest?”

Arthur thought for a moment, then raised a hand, waggled it and let drop. “Eh.”

“I thought so.” Her eyes glinted. “I think there is something you might like better.”

Arthur put his chin on his hand and pursed his lips. “Go on.”

Her smile widened. “Ah, but I can't.” She put a finger on his lips. Arthur felt a tiny thing like a shiver down his spine. “It's a secret.”

He swallowed. “I'm good with secrets.”

She looked him over, very nearly checking him out. “So you are,” she said eventually. “But it's not just mine.” Very suddenly, she got up and went to her own chair. “Would you consider changing your major?”

Arthur shrugged. “Depends what I'm changing it to.”

“Something you'll like better,” she said simply.

Maybe it was reckless and stupid, but Arthur trusted her. “All right, then. Just for you,” he added on impulse.

She leaned back in her chair. “I do,” she said, drawing the word out, “like it so when you smile,” and Arthur felt warmth blooming in his face, and in other places, too.

He beat a hasty retreat, but he filled and sent all the forms she forwarded to him.

~~

The man sitting next to Mal was broad-shouldered, narrow-eyed. His hand resting on Mal's thigh made Arthur feel like he'd been doused with cold water.

That was probably for the best.

The offer Cobb had to make him (he asked Arthur to call him Dom. Arthur didn't, slightly out of spite, mostly to remind himself to play nice) was an interesting one, but Arthur wasn't sure. It sounded hinky to him.

“Hinky?” Cobb said, with an amused smile and a twitch of an eyebrow.

“I believe that to be the best word under the circumstances, yes,” Arthur said in a cool tone of voice.

Cobb laughed, suddenly, and looked at Arthur with bright blue eyes alive with something like fondness. “Mal said you were something,” he said. “C'mon, join us. We'll make it worth your while,” and Arthur decided he may as well call the man by his first name if he was going to look at Arthur that way.

~~

It turned out that Arthur's new major was basically his old major with a few oddball courses added. He sort of rolled his eyes and went along with it, studying basic chemistry and psychology and, much to has bafflement, intro to economy.

(“It's about how large systems fit together,” Dom told someone else years later, long after Arthur himself has figured it out. “I would have thrown in intro to logic and set theory, too, but we ran out of academic points.”)

Beyond these was a requirement that didn't show up on the curriculum. For fifteen minutes twice a week, Arthur would go to Dom's office and dream.

There were other students there; Arthur was almost ashamed to be surprised by that. These weren't the bored first-years he shared his other classes with: these students were bright eyed, eager to learn, the best of their respective classes.

Arthur would have to work hard to upstage them.

In the end, it wasn't actually about Mal and Dom. It was about the work itself, which was beautiful and complicated and needed a particular sort of mind. Arthur knew in his bones he could do it better than anyone else. Mal and Dom were like avatars of the dreams themselves, and Arthur fell in love with them because he fell in love with dreaming.

Although he had to admit that sometimes he suspected it was the other way around.

The class' final project was a bit of world building. Dream worlds had a tendency to run liquid, blurring between times and location. Their assignment was to define and create a dream world that was steady, stable and reliable.

Nobody found that much of a challenge, though. What all the students were sweating bullets trying to do was make it beautiful.

Arthur saw all their sketches. Marcia built a structure that was somewhat like the Parthenon and somewhat like Stonehenge, both wild and intricate. Corey built a space station, all blue steel and diamond windows. Grace built a grand mansion, with acres on acres of cornfields and a bright blue sky. Paul built a three-story house with the most comfortable-looking couches Arthur had ever seen.

Arthur didn't know how to top that. He swore to himself and throwing crumpled draft after draft to the wastebasket. At least his aim was getting better.

In the end he paused, blinked, thought “Fuck it” and tore up everything he'd done so far. He drew something with coarse, simple lines, too big for the page, stark and unsubtle.

And then he stared at the paper, sighed, and started filling in all the delicate details.

~~

What it was, in the end, was a waterfall. Arthur had started with the memory of the Niagara falls, not the shining tourist attraction he'd visited as a child but how he imagined they might have looked centuries – millennia – ago.

They were all standing in a dark wood, too dense for sunlight to come through the leaves. Arthur's breath condensed into a brief white fog as he examined his surroundings. He went through the trees to where he could hear the roar of water.

He looked at Dom and Mal as they went. Mal, wrapped tight in Dom's jacket, was looking curiously around her, pointing things out to Dom – a particular plant, some small animal in the distance, a bird's nest on a tree – and speaking softly.

Then they were out of the woods, and Mal was silent, either because of the noise or because of the view.

The falls started impossibly high above them. In front of them was something like a lake, narrowing back into a river where they couldn't see it. Arthur's face was wet with the spray – the air was hazy around them, and small icicles were already forming in Mal's hair.

She laughed, then, delighted and sounding so young that Arthur wanted to hug her. Dom did hug her, smiling enormously at the sight before them.

“Come on,” Arthur shouted above the roar. “I made a way--”

They followed him to where he put a natural bridge, a rocky ledge half-hidden in the trees. Mal walked up it as certainly as she climbed the broad steps to her office, heedless of the slippery-wet rock. Dom followed more cautiously, and Arthur went behind them, watching in case they fell.

The walk wasn't short, but they ended up directly behind the falls themselves, where the sound was as much a physical presence as the water and rock. Arthur leaned back, not caring if he got lichen on his suit. It was, after all, imaginary.

When they woke up, Mal was still smiling. So was Dom. Arthur suspected he himself was no different.

Dom looked at him, opened his mouth and closed it. Then Mal said, “I want you to take us back there.”

Arthur blinked. “Now?”

“Silly child,” Mal said, taking away any sting he might have felt with a soft brush of her fingers on his forehead. “Come to our house. Tomorrow, maybe, or on the weekend if you prefer.”

“Mal,” Dom said with a hint of warning, but she hushed him.

“Nobody else has his clarity,” she said, fixing Dom with a look. “I want to see what he can do when he has more than five minutes at a time.”

The smile Dom gave Mal was indulgent, but he looked at Arthur sharply. “What do you think? Can you do better?”

“Dom,” Arthur said with fullest sincerity, “I haven't even begun knowing what I can do.”

~~

If trying to get their attention was demanding and thrilling, having it was breathtaking.

Mal wanted more. Mal wanted more worlds, more space in each, more new things to explore and look into. She kept catching him with questions like “Shouldn't there be a swamp south of the lake?” or “Can you do something with byzantine architecture?”

Arthur could, and did. Mal would have a stack of books in her office waiting for him, on wildly  
unrelated subjects, anything from the history of silk to the formation of sedimentary rock. Not all of it was interesting, but pretty much everything came in handy at some point.

Dom was different. Dom cared about the details, about repeatability. He had Arthur building from specs Dom wrote for him, grilled him on everything right down to the type of cobblestones and the color of kerosene flames.

Getting through all this and the rest of his classes, too, was getting a bit difficult. Arthur had no idea how the other dreamers-in-training managed. Still, it wouldn't do to show weakness. He was nineteen, he could sleep when he was old.

That lasted until one day he arrived at Mal's office to find her grading papers and more than a little surprised to see him.

“We have a session now,” he told her, but she only looked puzzled. Arthur clamped down on his growing panic. He can't have fallen out of favor, not so soon, not without warning. “Subjectivity of the passage of time, Dom wanted me to go over it with you.”

There was a pretty little crease in Mal's brow that wasn't there before. “We did that last week, Arthur.”

“Last-- no,” he said, thickly. He had trouble speaking for some reason. “Last week. That was the Muslim influence on--”

“And that was last semester.” Mal got up and walked to him, heels clicking. She seemed to sway as she walked, more than she should. He wondered that she managed to keep her balance so well when the ground was so unsteady. She raised a hand and touched his forehead, nearly flinching. “Arthur, you're burning up.”

“'M not.” He cleared his throat, struggled for coherence. “I'm never sick.”

“You are now,” she said firmly and pushed him into her chair. He went, boneless with fatigue. She snapped her cellphone open and dialed.

“Who are you calling?” he asked even as he heard Dom's voice on the other side. “I'm fine,” he said, even though she clearly wasn't listening. “I just need to sleep.”

“Exactly,” she said, and Arthur wasn't sure who she was talking to. She spoke some more and snapped the phone shut. “Dom's coming to get you.”

If his face was hot now, it was from the monumental blush spreading over him. “Why?” He tried for reason. “Look, I'll go to my room, sleep this off.”

“Your room, yes. You live in the dorms?” She barely waited for his nod before she took up a pen and paper and jotted some things down. “Give this to Dom when he picks you up. I swear, that man, he can buy caviar and forget we need milk.”

“Shopping?” Arthur was officially not following anymore.

Mal's look was kind, and a little amused. “A metaphor, Arthur.” She pushed his head back down to his folded hands – apparently he'd rested it there before, although he couldn't remember. “Sleep now.”

He barely managed to wake up when Dom arrived, but he remembered to give him the list as they entered Arthur's dorm room. Dom looked at it critically. “Right. Where are your clothes?”

Arthur had by now completely given up on understanding what was going on and why, since Dom brought him thus far, he now objected to Arthur lying down for a nap. He complied with Dom's requests, and made no objections when Dom grabbed him gently by the back of his shirt and took him back to the car.

“We have three guest rooms,” Dom reassured him. “It's no trouble.”

Arthur was pretty sure he should be horrified at the imposition, but he was too tired to argue.

He woke up when it was dark and his mouth tasted like something pissed in it. The sheets smelled a bit like that, too, and Arthur was frozen in terror for a moment before he realized that no, the room just kind of smelled bad. The mattress was a half-inflated rubber thing that swayed under him like a grumpy water bed. After some struggle, Arthur managed to get up and walk down the stairs with only minor injuries.

Dom and Mal were cuddled on the couch, watching something black-and-white. Dom noticed him first; he poked Mal, who grumbled but moved away to let Cob up.

Cob looked Arthur up and down. “How are you feeling?”

“Bad,” Arthur said, still too tired for tact. “Better. Uh, thank you.”

“It's fine. Do you want soup?” Dom opened the fridge and closed it. “Scratch that. Tea?” He looked in the fridge again. “Half a can of apple sauce? Chinese from yesterday?”

“Tea, thanks,” Arthur said gratefully. His throat was killing him. He wanted to ask Dom if they had honey, but didn't want to make the guy uncomfortable if they didn't.

It was surprisingly easy to sit down by the kitchen table and let Dom make him tea, especially when Mal came from the living room to sit next to Arthur and card a hand through his hair. Arthur considered pointing out that she shouldn't really do that, but he felt shitty and it was nice so he put his head down and let her.

Dom placed a cracked green mug in front of Arthur. The tea was unsweetened, but surprisingly good. It made Arthur's stomach settle down. “What is it?” he asked after a couple of sips.

Dom shrugged. “Forget the name, something mai cha. Japanese, I think, or maybe Chinese. It's got rice in it. I like it, Mal thinks it's evil and untrustworthy.”

Mal muttered something in French, which made Dom smile at her warmly and walk across the table to kiss her, slow and comfortable. As though Arthur wasn't sitting right there.

He didn't have the energy to care.

They wound up back in the living room, now watching something with subtitles in a language Arthur didn't even recognize. Mal and Dom were cuddled on the couch again, and Arthur sprawled in a really rather comfortable overstuffed chair. His head hurt, his throat hurt, he was pretty sure the movie was crap, and he was so happy he thought he might burst.

~~

They kept inviting him over after that.

In the cold light of day, their house was frankly a bit of a sty. Dom was apparently congenitally blind to unwashed dishes and Mal had no idea how to do laundry and found the machine a bit terrifying. Arthur found himself in the unenviable position of trying to explain it to her.

“Look, it's not like _I_ was born knowing it,” he finally said in exasperation. “It's all in the manual. Just read it.”

But Mal apparently lived in terror of destroying all her nice clothes, and Arthur found himself loading a batch just to show her how. It came out sweet-smelling and clean and not at all ruined, (“It's supposed to do that,” Arthur had to tell her at least five times. “It's a machine that's designed to do that exactly. Really, you can stop hugging me.”), Mal insisted on buying Arthur dinner.

He eventually bargained her down to buying groceries and letting him cook. The Cobbs had a crapload of fine kitchen equipment they received as wedding presents, little clue what to do with any of it and less space to put it in. It was all a jumble, but Arthur managed.

“Just something simple,” he kept saying, and then found himself making jambalaya because he wanted fish and Mal and Dom liked spicy food.

It was good, and when it was done Arthur gently bullied Dom into washing the dishes while Mal went to take the laundry down and fold it. Arthur got a cup of tea and made himself comfortable in their living room, a bit amazed at his own audacity.

“I should be heading back,” he told Dom when the guy came to lounge on the couch. “I still have homework to do.”

Dom frowned and leaned up to look at Arthur's bag, resting on a kitchen chair. “Don't you have your stuff here?”

“Yeah.” Arthur left the “So?” unspoken, but it was clearly recognized nevertheless.

“So, do your homework. Stay the night.” Dom flopped back down with little grace or dignity. “There's still some of your stuff here from when you were sick.” Arthur opened his mouth to object, but Dom raised a finger. “It is late,” he said mildly, “and I'm not actually sure the buses still operate now.”

“They do,” Arthur said, mildly affronted that Dom thought he hadn't checked. “It's not like it would take me that long to get home.”

Dom shrugged. “The mattress is yours if you want it.”

The mattress was crap. The only reason Arthur had been able to fall asleep on it in the first place was that he was feverish. The room smelled and Arthur was highly skeptic about what spare clothes he and Dom might have gotten while Arthur was too sick to see straight.

“OK, thanks,” Arthur said and made his way to the kitchen table.

He was halfway through his sketch before he realized he'd said yes, and by that time there really weren't any more buses. Arthur jerked up in his chair, a curse half-formed on his lips when he felt Mal brush up behind him and lean her arm on his shoulders.

“So tense,” she said, disapproving. “You should rest more.”

“No, what I should do is start my homework on time so I'm not stuck doing them instead of sleeping,” he grumbled. “I have no idea how your other students manage.”

Mal didn't answer. When Arthur looked up at her, she was giving him a patient smile. “You have more than half again their coursework,” she said gently. “Between those,” she pointed to his bag, where books she'd lent him spilled out, “and this,” gestured at his sketch, “it's no wonder you don't sleep enough.”

Arthur smiled, slowly. “You like me better than all the other boys,” he said, daring.

She laughed, then. “Of course we do. You have the loveliest dimples, Arthur.” Something in her posture changed. “You're done with this for the night. Leave it here, I know you start late tomorrow; you can finish it in the morning and Dom can give you a ride to campus. Come here, I'll show you where the towels are.”

Arthur was left blinking, and wondering if they had actually been having the same conversation.

~~

Thump. Thump. Arthur cursed, tried to roll over, and cursed again when the mattress tried to eat him. He was too hot in his sweats, he couldn't get to a proper position, and this _noise_ \--

Another attempt to roll over had Arthur flat on the floor. He gave up and left the room in search of a bicycle pump. What he mostly found was Mal's baffling collection of coffee tables, left up here because there was no room downstairs. Maybe if he went down now....

From across the corridor he heard Mal's laughter, clear as a bell. He froze in place. He wasn't snooping, he justified to himself hastily. He just wanted to sleep. He wasn't doing anything wrong.

But Mal wasn't here, he realized, she was in her room, talking to Dom. Probably talking, he thought, and remembered the thumping sounds.

Arthur took a step, and there was another sound. That was definitely a groan, and there wasn't anything feminine about it.

Arthur's ears burned as he fled back into the guest room, closed the door to muffle the sounds even though that made the room hotter. It didn't really help.

In the morning, he found himself rather grateful that he already knew how to operate the washing machine.

~~

He ended up moving in with them after the first year, after spending more nights at their house than not during the rest of the term. Dom argued that it was a perfectly rational move; it allowed them more time to practice dreaming, after all, it was cheaper than the dorms, what with Arthur cooking and Mal doing the laundry. It would give Arthur access to resources he wouldn't otherwise have (read, rather than Mal lugging half her library to lend him, he could just grab whatever off the shelf). It was righteous, it was great, it was the best thing since sliced bread.

Mal just smiled and said nothing at all. Arthur found that to be a very compelling argument.

So he moved his belonging, such as they were, got rid of the horrible inflatable mattress in favor of something made with materials found in nature, arranged for a fan and scoured the room thoroughly with bleach until it stopped smelling of unhappy cat.

The trouble – if he could call it that – was that Mal and Dom acted like they forgot he was there. Not in an ignoring-him way, more like:

“Toast?” Dom asked Arthur. Dom was bent looking into the fridge, wearing rather frayed boxer shorts and nothing else.

“Mmm. Perhaps later,” Mal said. She was lounging against the counter wearing a nightshirt that was really just a shirt. She smiled at Arthur and lay her head on his shoulder. “What would you like?” Her voice was low. She licked her lips.

Arthur really didn't want to answer that question. It didn't help in the least when Dom rose and said, easily, “Stop corrupting the youth of the nation, Mal,” pinned her against the counter and kissed her with Arthur only a few inches away.

“Do I really qualify as youth?” Arthur's voice had a lightness he didn't quite feel.

“Close enough,” Dom said and ruffled Arthur's hair. When Arthur grumbled and tried to tidy it back (nearly impossible without gel, and he didn't like to use that every day) Dom held Arthur's jaw with a firm hand, using the other to smooth the errant hairs back into some semblance of order.

Arthur leaned his head back against the kitchen cabinet and breathed deep, because he had an uncomfortable feeling he would burst into flame if he didn't.

Neither Dom nor Mal seemed to notice that there were ways you just didn't touch people you weren't in a relationship with. In addition to that, Mal kept giving him inappropriate gifts.

“This was on sale.” She tossed it at Arthur, who caught it easily. “Try it on, it will look fabulous on you.”

It was a black silk pajama. Arthur gave Mal a level stare. “Really?”

“You said your room was overheated,” she said, with not the least hint of apology. “Since you insist on sleeping in clothes, they may as well be comfortable. Go on, they're lovely.”

They were, actually. Even Dom thought so, and voiced his opinion unsolicited and unembarrassed. Arthur wasn't even sure why he bothered blushing any more.

Later that night, he'd gone downstairs to get a drink of water and found Mal perched on the edge of the kitchen table, kissing Dom with her long, bare legs wrapped around him. Dom was shirtless, and Arthur watched muscle move under pale skin, unable to so much as blink.

He must have made a sound, because Dom turned around and quirked a questioning smile at him. Arthur, wordless, raised his empty glass. Dom shrugged agreeably and maneuvered himself and Mal so that Arthur could have access to the tap.

Mal mumbled something, and Dom laughed low in his chest. Arthur had no idea whose hand it was that goosed him on his way back to the stairs.

~~

After that, it was a jacket.

“I didn't even buy it,” Mal said, defensively. “Not really. I practically rescued it.”

“There is a difference,” Dom said without looking up from his newspaper, “between thrift shops and the SPCA.”

“Of course, dear. I actually care what happens to the clothes.” Mal turned to Arthur with her commanding look. “The light blue shirt. It's second from the bottom of the shelf. Change into it and we'll take a look.”

Arthur did, because there was no point in doing otherwise, and because he found himself fondling the weave of the jacket, enjoying the precision of its form.

“Go.” Mal shoved at him. “You can molest it later.”

“And you can molest me,” he grumbled with no real heat.

He was surprisingly okay with that, with all of it. He was resigned to the fact that Mal and Dom petted him like a house cat, the looks and jokes and, all right, pinches sometimes. They didn't mean anything. Dom and Mal were married, and they brought Arthur in because they thought he was bright and, in a strange way, fun.

Arthur felt like he spent most of his days aching with want, lately. It even followed him into dreams, when the last thing he felt before he fell asleep was Mal's soft touch securing the IV, and the first thing he saw waking up was Dom's face, inspecting him.

Even so, it was sweet. There was something very comfortable about wanting the impossible, since it meant he had to expend no effort to actually get it. He let Dom rub his hands and Mal choose his clothes and it was fine, it was good. They were his friends and he loved them.

Mal smiled at him when he came down wearing the correct shirt. She draped the jacket on him, pursing her lips. “We should maybe have it taken in here,” she said, buttoning and unbuttoning it again. She gave him a thoughtful look, then fixed his collar and smoothed her hands across the front of his shirt, her thumbs catching on his nipple.

Arthur didn't dare breathe. From Mal's satisfied smirk, that was the intended reaction.

“Don't torture the guy!” Dom yelled from the living room.

“Well, he did invite me to molest him,” Mal said with more than a hint of smugness.

Dom finally put his paper down. “I suppose he did,” he said with a mild shrug. He walked closer and inspected Arthur, who was now trying desperately to swallow. “Not bad,” he said judiciously, and smoothed a firm hand over Arthur's ass. “You might want pants to go with that.”

Arthur closed his eyes.

“You just wanted to grab him,” Mal said, with a hint of laughter in her voice.

“True.” Dom ambled back to the living room.

Arthur dared to open his eyes. The look Mal gave him was amused and deeply, strangely tender. “Breathe, Arthur.”

“I'm trying.” Was that his voice? He'd never sounded like that, so... lost.

Mal blinked and grabbed his shoulders. “Dom, come back here,” she called. “It seems there's something we need to see to.”

“I sit down, they get me up,” Dom muttered, but his eyes were bright as he looked at them. He went to stand behind Arthur, his hands covering Mal's. “All right. How are we doing this?”

Mal rose on her tiptoes and kissed Arthur.

He should have frozen, or pushed her away. Her husband was right there, she'd _called_ him there for crying out loud. But she licked at Arthur's lip for permission, and he had to let her in. Dom's hands tightened on his shoulders, he could feel Dom's thighs touching his, Mal's soft round breast against his front.

When Mal let him up, Dom turned Arthur's head gently and they were kissing, too. Stubble, Arthur thought, and his hand rose unbidden to trace it. Mal leaned her face against Arthur's chest, making a content sound.

They were catching their breath when Dom's phone rang. There was a flurry of curses as Dom tore himself away from them and answered, his expression going blank as he heard the voice on the other side.

It was short. Dom snapped his phone shut and grimly said, “There's a job.”

Mal hissed. “Now?”

Arthur, still dazed, blinked. Licked his lips and tasted both of them there – finally, their mouths and their hands on him, and now Dom had to go?

Dom was packing with furious speed. Mal detached herself from Arthur to help. Arthur found himself going to the bathroom to fetch Dom's shaving kit and deodorant. He passed them to Mal, who placed them neatly in Dom's bag and zipped it closed.

Dom straightened and looked at them. “I should be gone for about a week. Ten days, tops.” His voice was brisk.

Mal nodded and rose to kiss him before he left. Arthur watched them as Dom's hand dug into Mal's curls, as her arm wrapped around his shoulders.

Arthur was still, with no idea whether he should move or, or anything. Dom broke the kiss and looked at him fondly. He kissed Arthur's cheek. “Make sure she behaves,” he whispered.

The door shut behind him with a final click.

~~

“I can't sleep.”

Arthur couldn't, either. He turned around to face Mal, who was standing at the entrance to his room. “Yeah?”

“Come with me,” Mal said. “I hate sleeping alone.”

He tensed. “Mal.”

She huffed, somewhere between annoyance and laughter. “I just want to sleep. Come on.”

Mal, Arthur reflected as he lay down in her bed, was a hard person to refuse. Mal and Dom's room was even hotter than his, because apparently Mal was always cold and Dom could sleep anywhere. He took his pajama shirt off, acknowledging his defeat even as he took in the gleam in Mal's eyes.

She slid up behind him and draped her hand over his waist, her fingernails tickling his bare skin. “He wouldn't really mind if we didn't wait.” Her breath huffed against the back of his neck, but she made no move to touch him further.

“We should anyway.” He covered her hand with his, joyful to have even this but missing Dom already, his quiet, steady presence and his large hands.

“I know.” He felt her soft laughter more than he heard it. “But I hate waiting.”

“I'm very good at it.”

Her fingers curled up against him. “Oh, I know.”

He tried to sleep, but having Mal against him was distracting. She kept squirming, pushing her breasts into his back, minutely thrusting her hips, until she growled and turned over to lie on her back, relinquishing Arthur.

“I'm taking care of myself,” she announced, “and you can look away if you'd rather, but I'm not waiting for you to get out.”

Still turned away from her, Arthur's eyes snapped open. He heard the whisper of silk as she took off her underwear, felt the softness of it as it fell on his arm. He could feel her moving behind him, her foot brushing against his calf as she spread her legs, the wet noises her fingers made, slipping inside her.

He made a noise like he'd been punched and turned to look, because he had to.

She was flushed, and beautiful. She was always beautiful, but never quite this much. Her eyes, half-closed, opened when she felt him turn over. She graced him with a lazy smile. “You can look, if you can't touch,” she whispered. “You may learn a few things.”

She'd spread herself open so he could see, slicked with sweat and herself. He watched the expert flick of her fingers, watched as she slid one inside and brought it out gleaming.

“It's not enough.” Her voice was only the tiniest bit unsteady. “It never is, my fingers aren't large enough and I have to miss him for ages and ages.”

Arthur watched, wordless, as her eyes scrunched shut and she tensed, letting out a single “Ah!” before subsiding.

Her eyes opened, slowly. “This was highly unsatisfying.” Her gaze sharpened. “Arthur, what did you do to your poor hands?”

Arthur's fists opened, slowly, and he could see where his own fingernails drew blood. He laughed, a bit embarrassed. “It's fine.”

“You mustn't let yourself hurt like that.” She cleaned herself with some baby wipes from the bedside table. Somehow she managed to make it look elegant. “I mean it,” she added with a pointed look at Arthur's crotch, where the silk pants did nothing to hide its current state.

“It wouldn't help,” Arthur said.

She sighed. “You're right. It never does.” She smiled, impish. “And nevertheless, I can't help myself.”

“And you shouldn't have to,” Arthur said, with firmness that surprised him almost as much as the effortless way he moved to kiss her.

~~

The next nine days taught Arthur how to keep a poker face.

Mal didn't formally teach him any more – he wouldn't have moved in with them if she had – but he still ran into her in campus, and he had to remind himself that this was her workplace and here he was nothing more but her former student.

The nights, in a way, made up for it. He would kiss her while she touched herself, their lips the only point of contact, his hands fisted loosely in the sheets because it physically hurt him that he couldn't give her what she wants.

What she really wants, he told himself ruthlessly, was Dom; she might want Arthur as well, but he was no kind of substitute. Arthur took some odd comfort in that, too.

They couldn't share dreams because Dom took the PASIV, and Arthur didn't dream on his own any more. Which was a relief laundry-wise, but since he didn't take the matter to hand, either (so to speak) he was left to spend his days in one continuous ache.

~~

Arthur's eyes opened at the sound of a key in the door. Mal mumbled something and tightened her hold on him.

His heart was beating to the rhythm of feet on the stairs.

And then Dom was there, outlined in the doorway. For a moment, Arthur panicked, thought that maybe there was something he misunderstood or didn't remember, imagined yelling and jealousy and everything turned upside down.

Dom just smiled and walked to the bed. He kissed Arthur briefly and patted his wife's shoulder. “Mal. Hey, Mal, I'm home.”

Mal's eyes opened. The smile she gave Dom was heart-stopping. She wriggled aside, and she and Arthur had an uncomfortable gap between them until Dom finished undressing and crawled between them. He dragged Mal on top of him and Arthur watched them kiss until they were breathless; then they shared an amused look, Mal slid away and Dom did the same to Arthur.

His mouth tasted of weariness and relief, and Arthur never wanted to stop.

“Are you tired, dear?” Mal asked Dom when he finally put Arthur down. The glint in her eyes was unmistakable.

“Not really. Why?” Dom pinched her nipple and she gasped. “Anything in particular?”

Mal swallowed. “First,” she said, “I think we Arthur a decent orgasm. Then we can get to you.”

Dom raised an eyebrow. “I was the one who spent the last nine days in a barracks.”

“And he's the one who wouldn't let anyone touch him for the last nine days, himself included,” Mal answered tartly. Arthur felt himself flushing. “He's hurting and I don't like that.”

Dom looked at him, steady and tender. “I guess we'll have to see what we can do about that.” He lay on his side, facing Arthur, and dragged him over for another kiss. Arthur nearly bit Dom's tongue when he felt a hand on him – oh, God, nine days but it felt like eternity, like the way time stretched inside dreams.

He made a warning noise. “I won't last.”

“Nobody expects you to,” Mal whispered in his ear, then tongued it. Dom gave him a particularly hard squeeze, and that was it. Arthur cursed and strained and relaxed again.

He still wanted, even at that moment. But they were only just starting.

Mal was taking off her shift and her underwear. Dom watched her with frank appreciation. Arthur, who had a bellyfull of watching now, turned to run a hand over Dom's stomach, stopping just above where Dom's cock was showing its interest in the proceeding.

Dom lay back with a groan and his hips snapped up. Unsubtle, Arthur thought with a smile, and went to put his mouth over it.

Arthur had imagined the feeling, the taste and the smell, and he decided the reality was just as good as he'd imagined. He wasn't, however, prepared for the ache in his jaw, which appeared almost immediately. He let go of Dom's cock with a small gasp, and looked up to see Mal kneeling over Dom's face, Dom's hands holding her thighs still while his mouth did to her what Arthur had been wanting to do for days.

He watched, mesmerized, until Mal gasped and _convulsed_ , rubbing herself over Dom's face. She settled at last, breathed deep and moved so Dom could lean up and wipe his face. She looked downward, appreciative. “Well done, Arthur,” she murmured as she moved to sit on Dom's cock. “Go keep him from getting bored, will you?”

“Not much chance of that,” Dom muttered, but he grabbed the back of Arthur's head to kiss him anyway.

Arthur licked Dom's face clean, his nostrils widening at the now-familiar smell of Mal's arousal. He sat up, then, reaching down to where Dom and Mal's bodies joined. He fondled Dom's balls with one hand, and slid the other between them, his fingers seeking Mal's clit.

He felt Mal's fingers soft on the back of his head, and followed their unspoken command to kiss and suck at Mal's gorgeous breasts. Dom's hand cupped his ass, grabbing.

Arthur closed his eyes when he felt Mal begin to shudder, when he heard the soft noises Dom was making. He couldn't bring himself to let go until they stilled under his hands.

Then Mal looked at him, and her eyes were full of knowledge. She lay down and pulled him with her, so that he lay between her and Dom. Dom's warm hands spread over Arthur's back, and Mal leaned forward to bite at his neck, playful.

“And back to you,” she murmured.

“Shouldn't it be your turn now?” Arthur asked her, arching into Dom's touch. “I mean, not that I'm complaining.”

She laughed, low and pleased. “I never bother waiting for it.”

“She really doesn't,” Dom whispered into Arthur's ear. His hand snuck down to wrap around Arthur's cock again. “She'll just sneak away and take care of herself whenever she wants.” Arthur's cock leaped at that, and Dom chuckled. “Someone sure likes that thought.”

“I hate that thought,” Arthur said through gritted teeth. “I don't want her to take care of herself. I want to do it for her.”

“Let me take care of you, now,” Mal said and scooted down to take his cock in her sweet, sweet mouth.

Arthur's hands wanted to curl into fists, but he didn't have the strength. He could only make small, broken noises while Mal's lips, Mal's tongue--

He very nearly missed the meaningful look she gave Dom. It didn't matter, since Arthur wouldn't have missed the sudden disappearance of the warmth against his back anyway. But then Dom was back, and he was touching Arthur in a place that made him stiffen and made a sound that was suspiciously like a squeak.

“Yeah?” Dom whispered in his ears. “You'll like it. I do.”

Arthur closed his eyes and allowed his head to drop onto Dom's shoulder, moving a leg to give Dom access. Mal's hand stroked over his quivering stomach. “This will be good,” Dom told him. “Trust me, it's the best thing ever.”

In the end, Arthur couldn't agree because he was too busy gasping, suspended between the perfection of Mal's mouth on him and that of Dom's fingers in him, and he couldn't even breathe, let alone think.

And then they were all lying in a pile, clutching at each other loosely. “Dom?” Arthur said, with his eyes closed.

“Yeah?” Dom mumbled.

“Welcome home.”


End file.
